Transparency Watch

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Back in September, I filed a public records request with the City of San Antonio asking for their last five years of payroll data. When I received the responsive records earlier this month, I was surprised to find that the data did not include employee identification numbers.

As any data journalist worth their salt knows, employee identification numbers are the most reliable way to match individuals who appear in multiple records--both within the same table and across multiple tables. People change job titles. People change departments. They even change their names when they marry. But an employee ...